


Dusk & Dawn & Midnight

by moemachina



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Ivalice (Ivalice Alliance)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26094529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: She does not see him flinch, but she hears him rise: a heavy, bear-like rustle of wool, chain-mail, and sighs.
Relationships: Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca/Basch fon Ronsenburg, Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca/Rasler Heios Nabradia, Vossler York Azelas/Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca
Kudos: 7





	Dusk & Dawn & Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> Move along, nothing to see here, just continuing to excavate Extremely Old Stuff I wrote years ago, dust it off, and re-position it in Grandmama's curio cabinet.

**I. A Dear Little Princess**

Ashe sniffled defiantly into her drawn-up knees.

“I won’t apologize,” she said. She was thirteen.

Vossler sat beside her in silence.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

Dusk rose up within the courtyard and shadowed the green leaves of the fig trees.

“I’m not sorry.”

Vossler closed his eyes. “He’ll have that scar the rest of his life, your highness.”

“I don’t care,” Ashe sobbed. “I don’t care about his scar, and nobody will ever see it, anyway. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care.”

Vossler reached out and silently stroked her hair as the princess wept blindly in the dark.

**II. Ties**

Both General Basch and Prince Rasler are strangers in a strange land, far from the land of their birth. That is something that binds them together.

Another tie is the sword. Rasler is accounted a pretty hand with a blade, but Basch is magnificent. So it is perfectly natural for the loyal captain to offer brief, informal lessons to his highness. They duel in the mornings, in a courtyard, sometimes.

And sometimes Basch will look up to see Rasler’s bride watching them, her hair crowned by the rising sun and all this new land’s glory.

She, too, is a knot.

**III. East of the Sun and West of the Moon**

She stands at the window, and the moonlight softens her dress into a color nearly gray. She does not look at him.

He does not stop kneeling.

When she speaks at last, her words are measured. “Vossler has informed me, Captain, that we have you to thank for my lord-husband’s return.”

She does not see him flinch, but she hears him rise: a heavy, bear-like rustle of wool, chain-mail, and sighs.

His voice is hoarse. “Your Highness. Would that I had died in his place.”

Ashe says nothing. She stares fixedly at the stars above and the black spaces between.


End file.
